OE Global Conference Action Lab

NAVELS, SCRAPED KNEES, and PENDULA,

Jess MitchellOCAD University, Toronto

April 14, 2016 Krakow Poland OE Global Conference

How many of you consider yourselves designers?How many of you have had trouble opening a door here at AGH? Both push/pull and pushing it and it swings open wildly…

1. mismatch as design solvable 2. one-size-fits-one 3. design decisions — as exclusion

3 things I want to focus on

D E F I N E I N C L U S I V E D E S I G N

Inclusive Design is design that considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference.

3 T E N E T S O F I N C L U S I V E D E S I G N1. recognize diversity and uniqueness

• Let individuals be unique 2. use an inclusive process and tools

• Nothing for us without us

3. have a broader beneficial impact

• look at the big picture

3 tenets of ID1. recognize diversity and uniqueness — how many of you consider yourselves average?

so why do we design for the average?2. use an inclusive process and tools — get experts to make the best solutions — if you’re designing learning materials for 6 year olds who are the experts?3. have a broader beneficial impact — set out to solve for everyone — and at least know who you are implicitly excluding. Know your weakness!

D I S A B I L I T Y

Inclusion then is about human difference — one way we describe people who are different is to talk about their difference as a disability. We sometimes hear disability describes as a medical condition — someone is afflicted, they can’t do something — they lack an ability.

D I S A B I L I T Y

And it is often associated with the medical model of 4 main categories of disabilities: mobility impaired cognitively impaired hearing impaired seeing impaired

But at the IDRC we completely redefine disability. It isn’t a medical condition to us…>>>

M I S M A T C H

Disability is a mismatch between the needs of the individual, their goals, and the learning experience offered

Disability is not a personal trait and because it’s so context dependent, it is a relative condition not permanent. Accessibility = the ability of the learning system to match the needs of the individual

>>>>>

DISAB I L I TY I S M ISMATCH

M I S M AT C H I S S O LVA B L E

D E S I G N C A N S O LV E M I S M AT C H

ALL EXPER IENCE MISMATCH

I got lost on my way to the museum last night so I flipped data roaming on on my cell phone and went to the museum website — but I couldn’t quickly find the directions, so I used up data and didn’t find the answer. It wasn’t a mobile site.

Making content available to those with cognitive disabilities often means simplifying the content — you know who else benefits from that? What about the executive 2-pager? In some cases it’s become a 1-pager — they’re busy, they don’t have time or energy to focus. They are cognitively impaired at that moment.

I was sitting in a lecture and I got a video from a friend — I wanted to watch it right away (i assure you it was relevant to the lecture) but it had no captions and I had the volume off. Putting earbuds or headphone on would have been too disrespectful so i couldn’t watch it.

I wanted to work on this slide deck in the park yesterday — it was so beautiful out — but the sun was shining directly onto my screen making it impossible for me to read my monitor. I can change the brightness and contrast though — this simple solution also helps the sight impaired user who has partial sight but needs slight modifications.

So now what — how can we do this Inclusive Design thing?? >>>>

O N E - S I Z E - F I T S - O N E

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Personalize

Wherever possible take a one-‐size-‐fits-‐one approach — LET THE USER DECIDE

when you can offer flexibility and customizability or personalization do it! examples: car dashboard — with digital i can change units same phone, different ways to organize the screen sit down at someone else’s computer and everything is different: the mouse scrolls the other way, the dock is somewhere else, the hot corners keep making your screen fly away.

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• Pace, Path, Content, Delivery Method• Presentation modality - visual, sonification…• Pedagogical approach

• individual, group, didactic…• Motivation – external, internal• Form of Feedback – formative and summative• Social support – peer, instructor, other• Degree of structure

What is personalization in education?It is all of these things — and this is a lot. We have a lot of opportunities to let the learner decide.

Student Agency and Self-Knowledge

• learning to learn

•metacognition• transitions• toward life-long learning

To personalize their learning, learners need to understand what works best for them.They have to learn about how they learn best — is it by focusing on simplified text only or is it watching a video while following along with interactive text and also highlighting the physical book? Tactile? Many channels? Private studying? Studying in a group? This isn’t a trick question…No silver bullet; no one answer; the answer is all of the above.

Navel Gazing and Meta-cognition•Learners as investigative scientists in their own learning

•Data in accessible and tangible forms

We’re exploring ways to help learners learn about themselves. To study themselves. We all think we’re fascinating — let’s learn why!

Even this requires that we design inclusively — how we present the information should work for the individual. Is it highly visual? Is it text?

E.g. my mom doesn’t understand all the visual metaphors we use in design:- antiquated save button in Word- Trash can for files- Google Maps example (two minus signs)

Scraped Knees & Learning Through Failure and Mistakes

•VR as risk-free simulation lab

•Opportunity for trial and error

•Opportunity to reflect on failure

Get to know what works for you by trying things — in a safe way and safe place. You won’t shut out the lights in Cincinnati — rapid prototyping; 3D printing, VR simulations — all give us a chance to try things without committing too much or potentially losing too much.

And we learn just how important and helpful failure can be! We all strive for perfection, for solutions.

First thing you do if someone presents a problem to you —> you try to solve it. Slow down and WAIT. And explore. This is where Innovation happens!

1. Silly Putty — meant to be a synthetic rubber for WWII — there was a rubber shortage because of the war2. Text Messages — cell phone carriers letting customers know about problems with their network3. a precursor to Email — created to let hearing impaired computer engineer communicate with his wife4. WD-40 meant to displace and repeal standing water to prevent corrosion in nuclear missiles. how many of you use it on your nuclear missiles??5. Rogaine was used to treat high blood pressure — hair growth was an unintended side effect6. Play-Doh was a wallpaper cleaner in the 1930s7. Microplanes were for wood or metal — I use them on orange rinds or horseradish when I cook!

N I K E F L Y E A S E

Inspired by a letter to Nike by a basketball loving teenager with Cerebral Palsy — what resulted is a sexy shoe with an innovative entry that is usable and attractive to everyone.

T R A M P O L I N E

BLOORVIEW rehab hospital has one of these and what’s so cool about it is that you have kids in their integrated school program playing together without barriers and kids in wheelchairs who have never had the sensation of jumping can feel what it feels like to jump.

S T O P G A P

Stopgap created these little wedges to help folks in wheelchairs get into businesses in the GTA. Folks with strollers also use them — no one is inconvenienced by them and they help.Luke Anderson an avid mountain biker had an accident and became paralyzed. He started stopgap.

O X O

OXO good grips was created when the owner’s wife had trouble gripping tools because of some mild arthritis.

These tools for kitchen and gardening became the go-tos in rehabilitation centres working with people on activities of daily living…

Who else has trouble gripping things?

O X O

this population.

OXO saw a market and broadened their products.

We have examples in the digital world too:top 3 uses:1. in a bar2. in a gym3. in bed with a sleeping spouse

Pendulums & Polarization vs. Dynamic Balance•Diversity vs. binaries•Dynamic equilibrium through diverse perspectives

• “Yes and”, not “but”•collaborate with others and compete with yourself

sex. race. disability. age. colour. language. religion. marital status. ancestry. culture. level of education.gender identity.

gender expression.record of offences.

we are all the same. we are people. we are equal.

embrace diversity. We are PART OF THE BALANCE.

Diversity creates Balance

These are exciting examples — let’s come back to what we need to do to get there… Instead of us versus them or those who need it versus those who don’t — we can think more fluidly.

D E S I G N I D E A S : B R I L L I A N T O R E X C L U S I O N A R Y ?

• With this brilliant design idea who just got excluded?

• Is there a way I can bridge the gap I just created? A way I can solve for the mismatch or avoid it?

One way we do this in the digital world is to make it multi-modal - text - audio - video - image

avoid hard to read fonts or font sizescreate an appropriate level of contrast

simulations and visualization provide interesting challenges make targets easy to hitcan you use it with the keyboard?be wary of time-based operationskeep content structured — semantic content

1. mismatch as design solvable 2. one-size-fits-one 3. design decisions — as exclusion

3 things I want to focus on

C H A N G E O F A P P R O A C H

• Environmental Scan

• Solve for mismatch - edge case

• Scenarios

• Gentle prototyping

Rough outline of the process we use for inclusive design — NOT LINEAR

First we try to understand the environment of what we’re working in. If we’re trying to solve a problem in a particular context we’d better understand that context really well and understand what solutions exist in that space — what their limitations are — what their successes are. Use cases — can’t enumerate people, they’re too unique and diverse if you begin to think of people as disabilities again here, you’re following a mental rut Scenarios will help you think through what someone does — they are a person with likes, dislikes, pressures, etc. Gentle prototyping because of the risk of going to a visual design too quickly.

E D G E C A S E S“We have clients come to us and say, “Here’s our average customer:”, for instance, “She’s female, she’s 34 years old, she has 2.3 kids…” And we listen politely and say: “Well, that’s great but we don’t care about that person”. What we really need to do to design, is look at the extremes, the weakest, or the person with arthritis, or the athlete, or the strongest or the fastest person. Because if we understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself”.– Dan Formosa, Smart Design, “Objectified”

http://sugoru.com/2013/07/14/designing-for-the-extremes/

They aren’t describing a person. It’s so abstracted and so removed from what a person does, it’s not that functionally useful. In other words, it’s useless.

How about instead this is Elsa, she’s 34 years old and struggling to find a rhythm in her new job — she’s a school teacher in Sweden — teaching mostly 7 year olds. She works really long hours right now trying to get all of her lessons just right for the 33 kids in her class. She has a 2 year old who is very picky about what he eats. Her husband works on the opposite end of town. They have two cars and a goldfish.

For a great read about how the average isn’t a real person and why we’ve historically come to defer to it so thoroughly, I recommend reading Todd Rose’s book, The End of Average that just came out in February this year. It’s a perspective changer itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectified

S C E N A R I O

Elsa is trying to put together a lesson plan to bring her kids together — her class is quite diverse (she has children from conservative, traditional households, children from very liberal households, and children who have recently emigrated from Syria and are struggling to learn the language and integrate into the culture). There is one little boy in particular that Elsa is struggling to help — Adnan. Now we have an opportunity to describe Adnan too — he comes to school hungry and seems as though he hasn’t eaten breakfast.

Now I’m combining Elsa with a friend of mine in Boston who teaches in a poor area that is overwhelmingly latino — the kids come to school without having eaten breakfast — they can’t learn…My own lack of knowledge about Sweden is going to limit me here… But you get the point… How might we describe a problem that Adnan is having and how might we solve it?

Singing to get to language learning — go fish games GAMES. MULTI-MODALWould the other kids benefit form it too??

H O W C A N I D O T H I S ?• think about the edge cases early and solve for

them — MISMATCH • can you let the user decide — ONE-SIZE-FITS-

ONE • think about design decisions as excluding rather

than solving — BRILLIANT? EXCLUSIONARY?

L E T ’ S D O T H I S N O W• think about a problem you want to solve • think about the edge case — create a persona • think about a use case — your persona in action

MISMATCH

• solve for them ONE-SIZE-FITS-ONE • ITERATE — watch for Design BRILLIANCE THAT

EXCLUDES

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Principle

Accessible Communication Tools

Accessible Design Tools

Accessible Development Tools

Synchronized Design Assets

Pair up with a co-worker to sketch or code

Exchange your ideas/projects with

participants from different disciplines in

your organization on regular basis to get

their feedback

Find an open-source community where you

can ask questions and/or contribute

Keep track of meeting notes, sketches and

research in a wiki or other open repository

Working together with others toward a common

desired outcome and shared goal is an important

part of the inclusive design process. We all bring

our unique experiences, skills and talents to the

table, and as a result, working collaboratively

ensures more diverse perspectives and therefore a

more inclusive design process.

By working with others rather than in isolation we

learn from one another; we share the

responsibility for an outcome, and in doing so we

learn to trust one another and rely on each other’s

expertise.

Learning to work collaboratively requires an

adjustment in the way that we approach our work.

Gathering and incorporating ideas from a diverse

group often takes more time and patience.

Questions of ownership or credit sometimes arise.

However, these challenges are far outweighed by

the benefits, as the rich and diverse perspectives

gained by working collaboratively ultimately

enhance the work.

Inclusive Design Guidelines

Practice

Collaborate


Practice

Collaborate

Try

Why

Diverse participation & perspectives

How

•

•

•

•

https://wiki.gpii.net/index.php?title=Inclusive_Design_Guidelines&redirect=no

- https://wiki.gpii.net/index.php?title=Inclusive_Design_Guidelines&redirect=no


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Personae are models representing potential

stakeholders who may use a product or service.

Although they are fictional people, their needs,

characteristics, goals and motivations are rooted in

the insights and feedback collected from various

sources including interviews/surveys or through

familiarity with the needs and interests of self,

co-workers, friends or family members. They begin

as early, provisional sketches and often evolve

through iterations as more information is gathered.

Personae are behavioural models; they do not

represent the full demographics of any given

population of complex and unique people. They

enable designers, developers and evaluators across

a project to keep a broad and diverse collection of

stakeholders in mind. They must be developed and

used with care in order to avoid stereotyping or

fictionalizing the user, and they must be tempered

with the awareness that no single persona or group

of personae can independently determine the full

range of potential uses of a product or service.


Tool

Personae


Tool

Think about various users in your domain

with unmet needs

Imagine a user, inspired by people you

know that is unique and doesn’t simply

represent the norm, the average, or the

typical

Draft the first version of your persona. Give

it a name, describe her life, needs,

preferences, likes and dislikes

Re-iterate and evolve your persona as you

collect more feedback form potential users

and/or stakeholders

Personae

Try

1.

2.

3.

4.

UX Walkthroughs

User States & Contexts

Use-Cases

Combine with




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Use cases describe particular scenarios in which a

persona may encounter and use a product or

service, providing more detail about specific tasks

and goals as well as helping to map out the

potential steps in a workflow. User personae and

accompanying use cases are not meant to

exhaustively describe all potential stakeholders or

situations; rather they help to illustrate key goals,

the main steps that should be taken towards

achieving that goal, and behaviour patterns related

to the design in question.

In an Inclusive design process it is important to

include edge cases. These are personae and

use-cases that describe both users with needs that

are not typically considered in the design process,

as well non-typical or unexpected uses of a

product or service. Use-cases present a picture of a

person in a specific context, with available tools,

existing constraints and potential distractions, who

is hoping to achieve a specific goal using the

product or service in question.


Tool

Use-Cases


Tool

Imagine what is your persona hoping to

achieve with your product/system (be

specific)

Describe the context, the available tools,

the constraints, potential distractions, etc.

Describe how your product can help the

persona achieve their goals

Re-iterate and evolve your use-cases as you

collect more feedback form potential users

and/or stakeholders and your project

moves forward

Use-Cases

Try

1.

2.

3.

4.

Personae

User States & Contexts

Combine with




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The medical model defines disability as a trait;

something permanent and limiting. In contrast, an

inclusive design approach is one that perceives

disability as a mismatch between our needs and

the design features of a product, built

environment, system or service. This shifts the

responsibility to the design, and to the designer,

to correct the mismatch. For example, a digital

interface with poor contrast does not match the

needs of someone standing in direct sunlight or

someone with low vision.

Inclusive design considers this mismatch to be

conditional, solvable through design, and the

result of many factors, including:

• Context (e.g. upon waking up in the morning)

• Environment (e.g. a dark room)

• Hardware and software variations (e.g. desktop

vs. smartphone)

• Unique personal needs and learning styles (e.g. I

prefer to listen rather than read).


Principle

Disability as Mismatch


Principle

Disability as Mismatch

Try

Record three examples of an experience of

mismatch that you’ve had, no matter how

large or small. For example - standing at an

automated bank machine in the glare of the

sun, I couldn’t see the screen at all. How did

you feel when this happened? What did

you do about it?

Use

Focus on functional needs & preferences

Design for adaptability & flexibility


-‐ https://wiki.gpii.net/index.php?title=Inclusive_Design_Guidelines&redirect=no


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We all have diverse needs, and we all experience

changes in our lives, in both the short-term and

long-term, that affect our interests, goals and

desires. As a result, designs that are flexible and

allow for customization are more likely to meet

our needs. A one-size-fits-one approach avoids

the often segregated and specialized design

solutions that are intended to meet the needs of

those “on the margins”. These solutions do not

serve the individual or society in the long run.

Adaptable designs that allow for personalization

result in integrated systems that work better for

everyone. In the digital world, we have the

freedom to create a design system that can adapt,

morph, or stretch to address each design need

presented by each individual. One-size-fits-one

design solutions give us the power to discover

and choose what works best for us in any given

context. This puts more control into the hands of

any one of us to create our own experience, and

to modify this experience as needed.


Principle

One-Size-Fits-One


Principle

One-Size-Fits-One

Try

Think of something you’ve come across in

your daily life that demonstrates an

adaptable design. For example, an office

chair with multiple adjustment features, or

a suitcase that can be turned into a

backpack. How could this design be

improved to offer additional or different

adaptations? If you can’t think of anything,

consider 3 adaptations you’d like to have

on a product or tool you use on a regular

basis.

Use

Design for adaptability & flexibility

Design for uncertainty


-‐ https://wiki.gpii.net/index.php?title=Inclusive_Design_Guidelines&redirect=no


FLOE Project• http://floeproject.org• Inclusive Learning Design Handbook

• open components addressing the gnarly challenges

• learning personalization• leveraging OER for one-size-fits-one learning

http://floeproject.org

S H O W & T E L L

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http://build.fluidproject.org/infusion/demos/prefsFramework/ (learner options demo)

Inclusive Design Cards https://wiki.gpii.net/index.php?title=Inclusive_Design_Guidelines&redirect=no

http://build.fluidproject.org/infusion/demos/prefsFramework/


T H A N K Y O U

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jesshmitchell